Books

Sherrie Eldridge's Books

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Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish

Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish devotional gives adoptive and birth families encouragement as they seek God to work through the emotions unique to their family. Daily 365 inspiring devotions are filled with Scripture and authentic insight into the heart of adopted children. Powerful prayer prompts help you navigate through difficult topics such as rejection, the missing faces in their lives, and much. More importantly, as you pray together through these tough topics, God will knit your hearts together to be a family and you will become the greatest prayer warrior for your adopted child. Based on the author’s best-selling trade book, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, families will find their hearts woven closer together through Christ’s love as they conquer adoptive life issues.

Endorsements:

“With tenderness and transparency, Sherrie Eldridge offers windows into an adoptee’s heart, weaving together hopes and hurts and promise.   For adoptive parents and others who yearn to listen well, these reflections allow us to hear and better understand the adoptee’s whispered prayers.”

Jedd Medefind,
President, Christian Alliance for Orphans and author of Becoming Home

“As parents it can be tough to understand some of the unique challenges our adopted children face. Sherrie reminds us that right from the beginning, adoption was God’s idea. Reading her short devotional encourages us that God is always at work giving us daily doses of inspiration and eternal perspective.”

Leslie Vernick,
licensed counselor, coach, speaker and author of The Emotionally Destructive Marriage and The Emotionally Destructive Relationship

“Who can understand the heart of an adoptee like another adoptee? Sherrie Eldridge has walked out every concept she addresses and talks not just from knowledge, but from experience. Beautifully expressed wisdom born from her own life marks this book as a must read for everyone who loves an adoptee. The short, daily challenges make it doable and accessible.”

Jennifer Kennedy Dean,
Executive Director of The Praying Life Foundation and author of Live a Praying Life(r) and numerous books and Bible studies

“We all need inspiration to keep us moving forward and Sherrie’s devotional is the perfect tool to encourage adoptive parents in their journey. Sometimes a few short lines can help us regain perspective and get us through the day. Sherrie knows the special needs of adoptive parents so there are no trite answers or simple solutions. Rather, gentle words that remind us of the most important things.”

Kay Yerkovich,
Co-author: How We Love, How We Love Our Kids, Speaker, New Life Live

“Adoption is a sacred undertaking – yet not without challenges. Sherrie Eldridge’s devotional will provide companionship and perspective for the journey."

Elisa Morgan,
Speaker, Author, The Beauty of Broken
Publisher, FullFill

“Sherrie is a blessing to the many children that have been adopted. Her books are full of love and hope.”

Derek Clark,
Former Child in Foster Care, Motivational Speaker and Author

“Adoptive parents need help, guidance and assurance in how to give their children a healthy foundational understanding of their own unique identity. Sherrie provides parents with an important tool to help them engage this extremely important, yet uncomfortable responsibility."

Dale Dove,
Adoptive dad, Attorney, and Fellow with the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys

Adoptive parents are sure to have moments in which they just don’t know what is going on for their child and how to help. Sherrie brings wisdom and peace to these moments with insight into the adoptee experience, her deep and abiding faith, and Bible-sourced comfort. A heartfelt addition to your adoption book collection."

Lori Holden,
Author: The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption
Blogger: LavederLuz.com

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20 Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make

In this newly refreshed and updated second edition of 20 Choices, readers gain a glimpse into the hearts of nearly 70 adoptees, ranging in age from seven to seventy-one. Perhaps, after reading, they will gain glimpses into the heart of the adoptee they cherish.

The chapters take you on an adoptee’s journey from the womb to the tomb.This second edition has much new material, encouraging adoptees to:

  • Know they are not alone in their struggles
  • Believe that it is possible to conquer anger
  • Conquer depression and anxiety
  • Understand their unique “rite of passage” into maturity
  • Discover unshakeable self-esteem and worth
  • Find clear direction for the future

This book, when applied, will transform the adoptee mindset from victim to victory, from shame to success, from guilt to gratefulness, from directionless to living life on purpose.

Endorsements:

20 Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make is indeed life-transforming for those who will take advantage of the wisdom contained therein. The practical help given in chapters six andseven alone are worth the price of the book! So often as adoptees we can struggle with a lack of understanding from those who are not adopted, and how to respond to triggering statements or actions.Sherrie’s wisdom on these issues is spot on. Adoptees will find great solace in her words and real help for the plethora of issues we deal with post-adoption. I am so very grateful for this amazing resource!”

Deanna Doss Shrodes,
Blogger, Adoptee Restoration and Author of Worthy to Be Found

"Sherrie has written an honest book of courage, trust, and hope. Her practical ideas, deep insights, and all-embracing sensitivity will be ofgreat assistance to adoptees as they construct their life stories. Her coremessage: Do not look away; discover who you are."

Dan Hughes. Ph.D,
author, Building the Bonds of Attachment, Focused Family Therapy Workbook

“As an adoptive mom and singer/songwriter and speaker at adoption conferences, I am once again VERY grateful for the honest and extremely helpful nature of Sherrie’s latest book, 20 Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make. Her previous books have been instrumental in preparing me and assisting us after the fact in our own family’s adoption of two siblings who’d suffered greatly. As our children grow and comprehend more of their past, present, and future, Sherrie’s insights and significant research continue to be an indispensable part of the healing, understanding, and hope-inspiring process for our entire family.”

Becky Wright,
Singer/Songwriter/Speaker, Founder ofTahlequah Orphan & Adoption Ministries, Departmentof Artists in Christian Testimony International

“This is a powerfully written book. Sherrie’s revealing documentation of her insights for adoptees combined with her own and others’ intimate, personal experiences dramatically highlight her difficult butliberating journey."

Dale E. Theobald, Ph.D., M.D.,
Senior Medical Directorfor Community Home Health Services and Palliative Care at Community North Health Network, Indianapolis, Indiana

“Although geared toward adoptee concerns and beliefs, Sherrie Eldridge’s latest book provides practical and spiritual information helpful to both adoptive and birth families. Social workers, therapists, and adoption professionals will find this book an important companion piece to Ms. Eldridge’s first book, 20 Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew.”

Dirck Brown, Ed.D.,
Author of Clinical Practice in Adoption and Founder of Post Adoption Center for Education and Research (PACER)

"Sherrie Eldridge once again is empowering the adoption community to understand the deeper implications of adoption which are often hidden by surface platitudes and off-handed catch phrases!  Her insight and wisdom, and the intimate stories shared by others, allow us to better understand the inner workings of the adoptee’s heart and thus gifts us with wisdom that will help us love our children well! And, as always, her transparency and authenticity is refreshing!"

Rebecca Swan Vahle,
Founder and CEO, Family to Family Adoption Support Network, Inc.

"Sherrie Eldridge, the adoption expert who has so ably helped adoptive parents better understand their children’s needs, is back again, helping other adoptees to learn from her own journey through search and reunion with her latest guide, 20 Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make. It’s a well-written guide for adoptees of all ages, empowering them to grow in positive new directions–– regardless of the outcome of their search. If adoption is your mountain, Sherrie Eldridge is your best possible sherpa, for few understand all of its peaks and passes the way Sherrie does, and her sage advice can help you reach your own summit."

Elizabeth Jurenovich,
MS, LCPAA, LPC, LMFT, Executive Director, Abrazo Adoption Associates

"Sherrie Eldridge speaks what so many of us wish we’d been able to explain to our adoptive parents. This has helped me tremendously as an adoptive mother myself now."

Rebecca Kiessling,
Founder and President of Save The 1, Co-Founder of Hope After Rape Conception, International Speaker and Attorney, Adoptee and Adoptive Mother

"Once again Sherrie Eldridge has written a very helpful book for the adoption community. This time her efforts have been directed toward adoptees and twenty ways in which she encourages them to take control of their own healing."

Nancy Verrier, M.F.T.,
author of The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child and Coming Home to Self

"It is impossible to articulate how life changing this book has been for me! I strongly urge every person whose life has woven into the tapestry of adoption to read it. For me, this book gave voice to my thoughts, emotions, and actions that were holding me back from fully living the life I was created to live. Eldridge uncovers the common threads adoptees hold on to throughout our lives, including grief, loss, rejection, fear, hope and love. In addition, she gives voice to the common questions about family, love, abandonment and courage that so many of us adoptees try and reconcile.

The greatest gifts in this book are connection, and the humble realization that we are not alone nor have we ever been alone in our life journey. Sherrie pulls back the curtains and shines the light of hope, healing and restoration to our hearts and minds through her transparency and vulnerability. My commitment to serving the adoption community, were in part birthed by this honest peek into the heart of adoption. It has been indeed transformational for me. I have shared this book with my clients and friends multiple times and consistently I hear the same response. “I wish I had known about this resource years ago”. To them I reply, “I totally agree! In what area of your life have you felt a disconnect in you ability to choose?”

LeAnne Parsons,
CPC, ELI-MP, The Walk Your Talk Coach, Legacy Now Lived™

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Twenty Things Adoptive Parents Need to Succeed

In this all-new companion volume to Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, Sherrie Eldridge shifts her focus from the adoptee to parents by offering them PURE ENCOURAGEMENT!

This book is PURE ENCOURAGEMENT for foster and adoptive parents! Sherrie interviewed 100 parents and you will hear their validating voices within the pages of this book. At the end of every chapter, Sherrie teaches parents how to hear and respond to the heart language of their adopted/foster children.

A companion book and sequel to adoption expert Eldridge’s 20 Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, this offers prospective, new, troubled or experienced adoptive parents a combination self-help manual, sourcebook and emotional touchstone featuring 20 ways to confidently and competently address the specific challenges of raising adopted children. Adopted as an infant (at age 47 she met her birth mother and learned she was the result of a rape), Eldridge is sensitive to all aspects of the adoptive parents’ journey and adroitly tackles many difficult, loaded issues including the importance of telling children the truth—positive and negative—about their origins as soon as possible, communicating heart-to-heart even when angry, when to seek professional help and understanding their own needs as well as their children’s. Since the advent of open adoption, the demand for secrecy has waned, but the stresses and disillusions of an adoptive family remain, and parents want to know they are doing the best they can. The author’s accessible information coupled with an accepting, understanding tone and personal insights will educate and reassure readers. Each chapter opens with a story about a family problem that is bound to resonate with readers and has imagined letters to parents from the young child, teen and adult adoptee’s point of view. Helpful direction and assignments appear in boxes, sidebars and bulleted lists. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Endorsements:

"Sherrie Eldridge once again makes a remarkable contribution to adoption literature, weaving together her personal experiences as both an adoptee and an adoption expert and skillfully examining the often unspoken thoughts of adoptive parents."

Debbie Riley, MS,
author of Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens, and Executive Director, The Center for Adoption Support and Education

“A must-read and must-keep resource for all adoptive parents, getting straight to the core of adoption issues. This is one of the most validating books for adoptive parents I have ever read, helping them to know not only that their experiences are different but how to turn challenges into healing moments.”

Heather T. Forbes, LCSW,
author of Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control

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Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Parents Knew

Adoptive parents, if you would like to learn how your child sees adoption, this is the book for you. It is required reading for many adoption agencies in the US.

A few chapter titles are: “When I act out my fears in obnoxious ways, please hang in there with me.””I am afraid you will abandon me.”

The voices of adopted children are poignant, questioning. And they tell a familiar story of loss, fear, and hope. This extraordinary book, written by a woman who was adopted herself, gives voice to children’s unspoken concerns, and shows adoptive parents how to free their kids from feelings of fear, abandonment, and shame.

With warmth and candor, Sherrie Eldridge reveals the twenty complex emotional issues you must understand to nurture the child you love–that he must grieve his loss now if he is to receive love fully in the future–that she needs honest information about her birth family no matter how painful the details may be–and that although he may choose to search for his birth family, he will always rely on you to be his parents.

Filled with powerful insights from children, parents, and experts in the field, plus practical strategies and case histories that will ring true for every adoptive family, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew is an invaluable guide to the complex emotions that take up residence within the heart of the adopted child–and within the adoptive home.

Endorsements:

"What a useful book! Sherrie Eldridge has illuminated many issues adoptees and adoptive families face. Her work is presented in a down-to-earth manner which is guaranteed to be helpful to families as they traverse the many facets of loss and its impact on adoptive families. Many  books have addressed “problems in adoption,” but Eldridge tackles the real villain: unresolved loss and grief issues and the trauma that precedes all adoptions.

Twenty Things is a gift to everyone involved in adoption. Eldridge’s personal disclosures add a level of warmth and genuineness and yet do not overshadow her message but rather focus and heighten it. I am adding this book to my list of highly recommended books."

GREGORY C KECK, Ph.D.,
Founder/Director of the Attachment and Bonding Center of Ohio and co-author of Adopting the Hurt Child

"Sherrie Eldridge has opened my eyes widely to the unique needs of my daughter and how to meet them. This book is so clear on the needs ofadopted children. I hope every adoptive parent like me will read it.”

STEVE ARTERBURN,
Founder of New Life Clinics and Women of Faith, author of Hooked on Life, Growing Up Addicted, How Will I Tell My Mother?, Drug-Proof Your Kids, When Someone You Love Is Someone You Hate, and Toxic Faith.

"Knowledge of what lies inside the adoption experience for many adopted persons equips adoptive families and children to enjoy healthy,effective lives.  In her book, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, Sherrie Eldridge not only creates an awareness of issues such as loss, grief, guilt, and shame as they emerge in the lives of adopted children, but she also gives families the skills to deal with these complex issues in the developmental years.  Gleaning from her own life experience and the expertise of many other mental health and adoption professionals, Eldridge makes a significant and meaningfulcontribution to the literature in the field of adoption.”

JAYNE E. SCHOOLER,
author of The Whole-Life Adoption Book, Searching for a Past, and Mystery History, trainer for the Ohio Child Welfare Training Program

"Here at last is a book adoptive parents have been waiting for. Author, Sherrie Eldridge has reached into her own experience as an adoptee and come forth with twenty important issues that adoptive parents need to know in order to effectively parent their adopted children. Focussing on the loss experience, Ms. Eldridge emphasizes the need for children to be able to grieve their losses, to know the truth about their lost heritage, and have help in finding the lost Self. With sensitivity toward the adoptive parents, Eldridge gently educates parents about the fears that adoptees harbor, both about the heritage (which is often a secret) and about their security in adoptive families. She offers parents insightful and practical advice about helping their children cope with these issues. But most of all, she offers hope. Allowing us into her own perceptions and beliefs about her life as an adopted child, Ms. Eldridge brings a ring of truth and immediacy to this complex and often painful subject. A book all adoptive parents should read!"

NANCY VERRIER,
adoptive mother, therapist and author of The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child

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Questions Adoptees are Asking

About beginnings, birth family, searching, and finding peace (NavPress, 2007) BEST KEPT SECRET IN FAITH-BASED COMMUNITIES!

Answers to an adoptees serious and heartfelt questions

Do you ever:

  • Wonder if your birth mother thinks about you?
  • Feel uncomfortable talking to your parents about your birth family?
  • Doubt your worth?
  • Wonder if your life was a mistake?
  • Think that others don’t “get it” about adoption?

Sherrie Eldridge interviews more than seventy adoptees to bring your questions to light, find the answers, and create connection among adoptees. Discover the freedom in your unique life purpose as you realize the value of your life. This book includes some of Sherrie’s inspirational writing as well as questions for support group or personal use.

Endorsements:

“One of the greatest joys of my life is raising my adoptive daughter, Madeline. This is a great book that would have made my fathering far more effective. It gets to the heart of the confusion, disconnection, and wonder of being adopted.”

Steve Arterburn, M.E.

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Forever Fingerprints, Second Edition…An Amazing Discovery for Adopted Children

This book meets an adoptees need for a sense of physical connection to their birth families. Every child, no matter their background and birth history, needs the message of this book. It is suitable for adoptees of any age, including adults!

How and when do I tell my about adoption? This is the most-asked question by adoptive parents. Forever Fingerprints will demonstrate the answer to this parental question as well as meet a deep need of their adopted children—to somehow have a sense of connection with their birth parents.

Endorsements:

“Forever Fingerprints is my all-time favorite adoption book! It not only gives adoptive families a concrete way to talk to their kids about adoption, it also helps the child acknowledge and understand their forever connection to their birthparents. As an Adoption Liaison in the Parker Hospital BirthPlace, every adoption placement is honored with the use of the Forever Fingerprints book. Fingerprints in the front cover from both Mother and Child – and sometimes from Dad, mark the precious connection between these people that should be embraced and honored.”

Rebecca Vahle,
Founder and Adoption Liaison
Family to Family Adoption Support Program

“God has a plan for each of us but it up to us to listen for his voice. It is our calling to reach out to the orphans. There are lots of children that need a forever family. We are all children of God and every child deserves to know that they are accepted and really belong. Sherrie does a fantastic job of writing from a loving and hopeful place…her heart.”

Derek-the Rapping Dad–Clark,
Motivational Speaker and Author.

“After adopting my daughter as an infant, and after decades of helping other people build their families through adoption, I understand this important reality: Adoptive parents need help, guidance and assurance in how to give their children a healthy foundational understanding of their own unique conception, development and birth, and how their family lineage has been directed through the path of adoption. In Forever Fingerprints, Sherrie provides parents with an important tool to help them engage this extremely important, yet uncomfortable responsibility.”

Dale Dove,
Adoptive dad, Attorney, and Fellow with the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys

“Sherrie Eldridge writes an amazing book for children. As an adult adoptee I love the amazing ability to have children make the connections of being adopted in their everyday lives. Sherrie is a talented and knowledgeable author.”

Pam Kroskie,
Founder and CEO of HEAR
Adoptee, Author, Legislation Specialist

“Once again, Sherrie hits a home run with her insight into the heart of the adoptee. This book honors the adoptee, birth mother and adoptive parent in a nurturing positive way. This is a great tool to talk with your child about their adoption story, and how truly special they are in the eyes of God.”

Bren Wolfe,
adoptive parent
Regional Director, Donor Engagement
Bethany Christian Services

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